1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to file storage and in particular to file downloads with browser applications. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to storing of descriptive data during a download of a file utilizing a browser application on a computer system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Methods of downloading files from a server of a network (such as the Internet) on to a storage device of a local system (i.e., a network connected computer on which the file download is initiated and the file stored) is well known in the computer arts. Most current examples of file download involve a browser executing on a local system downloading a file from a server on the Internet. Utilizing one of the various browser applications, users download files from the Internet to their local machine. However, other types of file downloads are frequently completed.
There are several types of files that are commonly downloaded, including executable files, compressed version of a group of files (zip, tar, etc.), word documents, and pdf files. Often, files that are retrieved on a server and downloaded to the client system contain non-descriptive names. These names are assigned by the developer/programmer, whose main concern is not providing user-friendly or descriptive filenames for the file/application. Later users of the file thus have no idea and are unable at times to ascertain where the file came from and what the file is used for. For example, an executable file for installing a software/application may be called run.exe. Although, this name identifies the file as a run file that is executable, there is no indication from that name what the actual functionality of the underlying software is. When downloaded to the local system, the file saves to a selected drive and directory as run.exe. If the user later wishes to obtain information about the file, the user has to execute the file in order to determine what descriptive feature is associated with run.exe. As another example, when a user downloads Microsoft's media player, the web page provides a file name of mpfull.exe, which is downloaded from the world wide web (www) site of microsoft.com /windowsmedia/download/default.asp and saved on the user's system. Later access to the mpfull.exe file provides little descriptive or origination information to the user, who would have little problem identifying the file if provided the URL and a proper description such as “Windows Media Player version ######.”
With some browser applications, a user is able to select the drive and directory to which the file may be stored. Also, the user may be able to change the name of the file prior to storing the file with the new user entered name. Of course, the filename provides only a limited description of the functionality of the underlying file.
One current improvement on the prior art is described in the Lincoln Beach software article. The Lincoln Beach method, Download Butler 2.0, provides an external application that assigns URL information along with the file being downloaded. The URL information may then be viewed inside the GUI of the extended application when the file is accessed within the external application. While providing URL information is helpful, the URL by itself does not necessarily provide enough information about the file itself, other than the file location on the Internet. Also, without the specific external application, a user browsing through the main file directory of the computer is unable to view the URL information associated with the file.
The present invention recognizes that it would be desirable to provide a method and system for retrieving and associating descriptive attributes of a file during a download of the file on a system. A method and system that enables the user to enter descriptive text about a file besides the name and later view the descriptive text and other descriptive file data without actually opening the file would be a welcomed improvement. These and other benefits are provided by the invention described herein.